If the boys back at the old mill could see Earl now

By PETER COOPER  Staff Writer   NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN

On Saturdays, Earl Scruggs worked second shift at the mill in Shelby, N.C. From 2 p.m. until 10 p.m., he was a spare hand. Sometimes, he'd be in the spool room. Other times, somewhere else.

The best part of the day was dinner break. That was when he could get a little pickin' in.

''Me and Grady Wilkie would sit in the back seat of my '36 Chevy and play music,'' Scruggs said, sitting in a small room at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, a place that will present four weekly concerts from Scruggs, his family and his friends beginning Tuesday. At those shows, he'll display the same groundbreaking, rocket-speed banjo style that he perfected in the back of that Chevy.

''He'd play guitar and I'd play banjo, and people would stand around and watch, and listen to us pick. That's when I first realized that what I was doing was of interest to other people. We'd do that until they'd motion us to come back into the mill and get back to work.''

These days, getting back to work means picking up the banjo and playing. When he left North Carolina, Scruggs headed to Nashville, auditioned for Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys band, joined in 1945 and forever changed the way American roots music was played and heard. The banjo method he popularized now is called ''Scruggs' style,'' and it is a basic enough ingredient in bluegrass and other forms of folk music to be considered elemental.

''There's nobody left in our town of his ilk and his magnificence,'' said Marty Stuart, one of thousands of Scruggs' followers. ''He's left such a profound influence on so many of our lives.''

Vince Gill put it even more simply: ''Taking nothing away from Bill Monroe, the instrument that made bluegrass unique was the banjo,'' Gill said. ''Earl created a form of music.''

Being there at the inception wasn't enough for Scruggs. He soon formed his own band with Lester Flatt, creating an act that would eclipse Monroe in popularity and profitability.

Flatt & Scruggs spread their sound through television's Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction, and through folk-boom-era performances at colleges and other venues that hadn't previously been open to bluegrass. The group's open-mindedness in booking and in musical selections was due, in large part, to the management of Scruggs' wife, Louise Scruggs.

''If it wasn't for Louise, I'd have been out of this business a long time ago,'' Scruggs said. ''The business wasn't organized, but she made me feel like whatever we had going on was an organization, instead of just picking a few tunes.''

Together, Louise and Earl continued to break new ground. When Flatt & Scruggs disbanded, Earl formed a country-rock group that included his son: The Scruggs Family Revue made music that further changed country music.